design

Tesla has snagged one of Microsoft's top designers, with former HoloLens industrial designer Andrew Kim leaving to join the electric car company. Kim will take up the role of Lead Designer at Tesla, his LinkedIn confirms. A graduate of the Art Center College of Design, the designer spent three and a half years at Microsoft.

At press time, Google's Noto encompasses 800 languages and 100 written scripts, all in a single typeface. The company has been working on this font for the past 5 years - in relative secret - with type company Monotype. The name Noto is short for No Tofu, and it's aim is to effectively rid the world of those little blocks (as shown in our lead image) that appear when a device sees a character it doesn't recognize. With Noto, no device will ever need show these blocks again.

Lexus says it will show off its Kinetic Seat Concept at the 2016 Paris Motor Show. The seat concept features a back rest and seat cushion designed to move kinetically with both external forces and the traveller's own weight, the ultimate goal being to help stabilize one’s head movements as they result from vehicular motion. That is interesting in its own right, but the concept takes things a step further by utilizing spider web designs — and their silk — for design and construction. Says Lexus, a spider web pattern and synthetic spider silk are both used with its seat concept.

We’ve seen dozens of uses of 3D printing, some of them even bordering on the bizarre or the insane. This one, however, probably takes the cake. Or in this case, the drink. Forget 3D printed chocolate car. But while Print A Drink doesn’t exactly print a whole drink for you, it does print out fascinating 3D structures inside them. All while there’s already an existing, drinkable liquid sitting inside the glass, making it almost too wasteful to actually drink the thing.

Joining yesterday's reveal of the Slate and Folio smartpads, Wacom is back at it today, announcing something of a refresh to its Intuos pen-and-tablet line. From a hardware perspective, not much is changing with the launch of the Intuos 3D, as users will still be getting a medium-sized Intuos with a 6-inch by 8-inch active area. The real shake up comes in the form of partnerships that transform the Intuos into a product designed to be an all-in-one solution for those looking to create and eventually publish or print 3D designs.

Chinese company Xiaomi has been accused of ripping off one of Jawbone's speaker designs, an accusation that isn't the least bit surprising to anyone familiar with Xiaomi's long list of 'inspired' looks. The speaker in question is the Xiaomi Mi Speaker Box, a portable Bluetooth speaker that looks strikingly similar to the Jawbone Jambox speakers. Though both have their own individual design choices, the Xiaomi's speaker grille design is remarkably similar to the one found on the Mini Jambox.

The Airlander 10 is a massive flying airship said to be the world's largest aircraft. The giant airship took to the skies for the first time this week with a short flight over an airfield in the UK. Airlander 10 is massive at 302-feet long and its maiden flight happened at Cardington airfield about 45 miles north of London.

The fast food world is full of gimmicks to lure people into their restaurants to buy food. McDonalds is likely the most infamous for this practice with lots of toys packed inside Happy Meal bags and boxes to make kids want to eat their food. Pizza Hutt has a new box that it puts its pie into that has something special left behind for you to play with after you eat.

If the thought of getting a tattoo is already scary enough for you — the pain, the needles, etc. — then having one done by a robot probably isn't going to be any more appealing. On the other hand, if you already have experience getting inked, and are really good at remaining perfectly still, the steady, precise "hands" of a robot could result in an interesting, detailed design. On the other other hand, if you just want to watch someone else get tattooed by a robot, check out the video below.

The Wacom Cintiq 27 QHD Touch is what I expected the high end of the digital illustration device world to be. It doesn't feel as "magical" as the iPad Pro, but it's a whole lot more powerful - and professional. It feels like a real professional piece of equipment, something that's been perfected over several iterations - a tool that a top artist would buy again and again. While (as always) there are some changes I might make if I wanted the ideal touch- and pen-friendly display/tablet, at the moment, this is as good as it gets.

In many parts of the world, the best you can hope for when it comes to a home or apartment is a very small space that can be challenging to furnish. The catch is that if you need things like a desk, bed, entertainment center, and sitting areas but you are in a tiny space normal furniture won't cut it. This is where the Ori robotic homeware and furniture created at the MIT media lab comes in.

Last week, we were treated to the sighting of a rather odd Sony smartphone on GFXBench that was suspected to be Sony's upcoming flagship for the second half of 2016. The specs shown there, however, were barely interesting, as they were near identical to the existing Xperia X Performance. However, there might be more to this Sony F8331 after all, with a fresh batch of leaked photos showing an intriguing change in Sony's smartphone design, which may be a welcome change after years of seeing nearly the same looks on Sony's smartphones.